The World According to Bob

At one point, for instance, we were working on the book on the day after I’d watched a film by the documentary-maker Louis Theroux about how parents in America were using more and more psychoactive medication to treat their kids for disorders like ADHD, Asperger’s and bipolar disorders.

It occurred to me suddenly that this was exactly what had happened to me. And it struck me that being treated like this must have had a huge impact on me when I was young. It made me wonder what had come first. It was a chicken and egg question: had I been given the drugs because I was acting up? Or did I start acting up because of all the visits to doctors who convinced me that there must be something wrong with me? Perhaps most scary of all, what effect did all that medication have on me and my young personality? As a young kid I’d considered myself quite a happy-go-lucky character, but since that time I had been what I suppose you’d call ‘troubled’. I’d struggled to fit into society and suffered from depression and mood swings. Was there a link? I had no idea.

What I did know, however, was that I couldn’t blame the doctors, my mother or anyone else for the way my life had gone since then. Yes, they had played a role, but the buck stopped with me. No one told me to develop a drug problem. No one forced me to drift on to the streets of London. No one made me take up heroin. They were mistakes that I made of my own free will. I hadn’t needed anyone’s help to screw up my life. I’d done a perfectly good job of that on my own.

If nothing else, the book was an opportunity for me to make that crystal clear.

For a moment my dad was lost for words. The expression on his face was a mixture of disbelief, happiness, pride — and mild apprehension.

‘That’s a lot of money, Jamie,’ he said after a couple of moments, putting to one side the manila coloured cheque I’d just handed him.

‘You’d better be careful with that.’

The reality of what had happened hadn’t really sunk in until now. Not just for my dad, but for me either. There had been meetings with publishers, contracts signed, even articles in the newspapers. But it hadn’t been until I received this cheque for the advance that it finally struck home.

When it had first flopped through the letter box a couple of days earlier, I had opened the envelope and then simply sat there looking at it. The only cheques I’d seen in the past decade had been from the DHSS. They were for small amounts, £50 here and £100 there, never anything with more than a couple of noughts on it.

Compared to some people, especially in London, it wasn’t actually that large a sum of money. For a lot of the commuters walking past me each day on their way to the City of London, I guess it wasn’t even a month’s salary. But for someone for whom £60 was a very good day’s wage, it was an eye-watering amount of cash.

The arrival of the cheque, though, had brought two immediate problems. I was terrified of frittering it away but, even more of a worry, I didn’t have a bank account into which I could pay it. I’d had an account years ago but hadn’t managed it very well. I’d got used to living on cash and for the last few years had taken all my cheques to a ‘cash converters’. Which was why I’d travelled to my father’s house in south London.

‘I was hoping you could look after it for me,’ I’d asked him over the phone. ‘I can then ask you for money as and when I need it.’

He’d agreed and I’d now had the cheque endorsed over to his name. (Not a huge change because we shared the exact same initials and surname.)

Rather than meeting as usual at Victoria, he’d invited me over to his neck of the woods. We went for a couple of drinks in his local and chatted for a couple of hours.

‘So is this going to be a proper book?’ he asked me, the scepticism he’d displayed ever since I’d told him about it resurfacing once more.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, is it a picture book or a children’s book? What is it going to be about exactly?’ he said.

It was a fair question, I suppose.

I explained that it was the story of how I met Bob, and how we’d helped each other. He looked a little nonplussed.

‘So will me and your mother be in it?’ he asked.

‘You might get a mention,’ I said.

‘I’d better get on to my lawyers then,’ he said, smiling.

‘No, don’t worry. The only person that comes out badly in all this is me.’

That made him change tack a little.

‘And is this going to be a long-term thing?’ he continued. ‘You writing books.’

‘No,’ I said, honestly. ‘I’m not going to become the next J.K. Rowling dad. There are thousands of books published every year. Only a tiny minority of them become bestsellers. I really don’t think a tale about a busker and recovering drug addict and his stray ginger cat is going to be one of them. So, yes this is going to be a short-term thing. It’s a nice windfall, and no more.’

‘All the more reason to be careful with the money then,’ he said, seizing the opportunity to give me some sensible fatherly advice.